For most of us boat owners, the winter is a time for taking the boat out of the water, snugging it down and spending hours dreaming of those faraway days in the spring when we can get back to the serious business of having fun on the water.
Tag: Environment Agency
Will plans raise risk of flooding?
I do despair sometimes when hearing about the Environment Agency’s plans. The current proposal not to replace resident lock keepers along the non-tidal Thames and to rent out their vacant homes – including those at Chertsey and Sunbury Locks – is a case in point.
Steps to improvement
One of my earliest recollections of the River Thames takes me back to when I was five or six.
Ashes remembered
Whenever Staines regatta comes around, it’s always a bit of a poignant time and this Saturday the event is being staged as a tribute to the memory of the crew of the Ashes eight, three of whom – David Firman, Alan Wickens and Alan Choules – died in a tragic accident at Penton Hook in April 1971.
Environment Agency’s licensing blooper
A couple of months back I wrote a piece in this column exalting in the fact that Environment Agency inspectors had nabbed a significant number of boats on our stretch of the Thames which weren’t displaying the proper registration licence sticker and urging all boat owners to do the right thing and apply for the river equivalent of a tax disc.
Do the decent thing
I get really angry with people who drive their cars on the road without paying the annual road fund licence. They are the kind of people who obviously think they’re more important than the rest of us and that the law doesn’t apply to them.
Thames 2 Piddle 0
During the 1950s, the River Thames was officially branded a biologically ‘dead’ river. It suffered from all kinds of pollution – both from industrial waste and from sewage – that was being pumped into it. Little could survive in the water and anyone falling into it risked major infection.
Keep a clean licence
Huzzah! At long last the wintry weather seems to be loosening its grip on us. The clocks have sprung forward and the temperature is heading up towards more sensible levels – and that means that for most boat owners the time is rapidly approaching when we can get our charges back in the water and start enjoying life afloat once more.
Why it’s bare on the bank
A few weeks back, I wrote an article highlighting the anger of a number of local people about the Environment Agency’s decision to cut down a lot of trees on the towpath of the Surrey bank of the Thames near Weybridge.
We should have been asked!
“What’s going on down by the river at Weybridge,” asked my regular contact Doug the Ancient Angler, “and just why have they chopped all the beautiful trees down?”